


Signal to Noise

by orphan_account



Category: Homestuck, MS Paint Adventures
Genre: Character Death, Death, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-12
Updated: 2011-01-12
Packaged: 2017-10-14 17:03:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,731
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/151516
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bluh bluh Bro death-fic like every other Bro death-fic. A look at one possible version of Bro's past, and his relationship to Dave and the game itself.</p><p>Old fic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Signal to Noise

**Noise**

Time slows when he moves fast enough. It's all relativity, simple physics. He's never known why. He's never cared. Most of the time, it's a gift, got the drift? Cept for now. Now it's hell. It's watching something that even he isn't fast enough to stop.

Destiny.

 **Signal**

He's always known this moment would come. No... not always. But he has known for a long time, and while he's never liked it, this isn't a surprise. Shouldn't be.

Except that it is. The form of the event, the way it all happens, this isn't how he imagined it at all. And he didn't imagine he'd feel this way. He doesn't do feelings. He certainly doesn't do sorrow, or despair, or pain.

He holds the bloodstained feathers in his fist.

 **Reverse**

“Fuck you,” he says. Not shouts. He never shouts. He doesn't shout because they always shout, every last fucking one of them. He has the baby in his arms and he looks completely ridiculous, a fifteen year old boy with a baby. She's still screaming in his face about which of those fucking skanks was it (None of them, you dumb bitch) and now he's done. Completely done.

He takes fifteen years worth of saving up from newspaper routes and carrying old ladies groceries and selling his music online and working retail in the record store after school and he walks out, the kid on his shoulders.

 **Reverse**

He runs across the rooftops, five year old feet smacking pavement as he jumps across distances no human should be able to. Here, he's out – here he's _alive_. No more defense by making stupid jokes and acting like a jerk, none of that. Lil Cal's on his shoulders and there's just him and heat and _speed_. He didn't try out for track. He _knew_ that he shouldn't, that they'd be suspicious.

He _knows_ a hell of a lot of things. Despite what the belt marks on his back attest. He knows a shitting fuckton of things that that fuckhead who calls himself 'dad' never will. Fathers are fuckheads, the lot of them. Fathers yell. Fathers hurt.

He'll be a brother, not a father.

 **Reverse**

They all look at him strangely. His eyes. Just. His eyes. The woman in charge can't understand it – he passes all the vision test with flying colors. Too well, even – 20/15 vision. It's not right. It's not natural. But that's not what bothers them most.

It's the way he looks at things like he already knows what they are.

It's the way all his drawings are of spirographs. Swords. And some of them of a dog- _thing_ , usually cut into pieces. They put him up for counseling which he sits through in stubborn silence. He hates dogs, sure. But he's never hurt one.

Not yet, anyway.

 **Forward**

It's nothing like how the books say, and everything like how it is in his head. Which is weird. Really fucking weird, he can't deny it. The baby is quiet. Never cries. That's chill with him.

Except tonight. It's three in the morning and the kid is crying and he can't fucking sleep and his job got hit by a fucking meteor and if he can't make the rent this month he's gonna get them both evicted and fuck if he's going to admit that he's really fifteen and fuck if he's going back to the foster care system because that's no place for him and it's _really_ no place for Dave.

He gets up, lifts the kid out of his crib, and looks into the boy's eyes.

“Crying is for pussies.”

 **Forward**

The porn site is doing way better than he'd ever dreamed, which is both awesome (for his bank account) and kind of disturbing. He'd already had a pretty dim view of humanity in general and this just confirmed what he suspected all along – people are _seriously_ fucked up. And way too fucking easy to make fun of.

He looks up at the sky. Those meteors can't come fast enough.

 **Forward**

Dave loses again in a sparring match. He does his usual big-brother cocky smirk and puts his foot down on the smaller boy's chest. He's twenty-five years old and it's really nothing to beat a ten year old.

Except this time it had gotten a little closer.

“Give it up, lil bro. You ain't never gonna touch this,” is what he says.

But what he thinks is, _get back up. Take me down. I know someday you'll do it, you little bastard. Get stronger. I want to live to see it._

 **Forward**

He doesn't scream from the nightmares. Just like he doesn't cry. Just like he never shouts, or loses his temper.

But they do come. Green fire and orange feathers. He has no idea what the latter means. But the former...

“Jack.”

 **Forward**

He climbs up on the roof and he stares at the sky. He doesn't scream. But his fists do shake. Some nights are like this. Some nights, he just wants to live his own goddamn life.

Some nights, he wants to be _human._

He walks back down the stairs and looks at Dave's sleeping face.

 _Maybe I wanted to see him grow up. Did you fuckers ever think about that?_

 **Forward**

Skaianet. He's on the website and he already knows where to click. What to look at. It's like this shit is predestined. It is predestined, actually, and he hates that just as much as he hates dogs (and cats. And chess. And fucking harlequins). He looks over at Dave and for a split second something in his chest tightens.

 _Jesus fuck I am so sorry about what's coming._

“Yo. You do your reading?” he says instead.

“Yeah,” says Dave.

“Fuckin liar. Go back and do it again. Motherfuckin Tolkien. You gonna learn this shit or I'm gonna put you back in the public school system.”

“Whatever,” says Dave, but he picks up **The Return of the King** anyway and goes to flop on the couch.

 _Maybe I'm Gandalf. Maybe I'll show back up and be like sup bitches got me a white staff and even more badassery!_

But he knows that's not the case.

 **Forward**

The ground spins. The heat burns. His eyes narrow behind his glasses.

A wordless challenge.

Jack recognizes it. Both of them know – this was fated. Neither quite know how it's going to end, though. Jack doesn't know how this will end. And he...

He knows the ending. Just not how he's getting there.

 **Pause**

Flash. Speed. Steel and flesh puppet and flash they fly, a cloud of orange and black feathers and blades. He's not even sure if he's breathing anymore, maybe he's already stopped; maybe he's moving too fast to breathe. Between it all, he somehow has a conversation.

“How's life?”

“Incredibly shitty.”

He smirks, just a little. “C'mon, lil bro. Live it up. We be heroes, here.” For the few seconds left that they have. Which at this speed, might actually be an eternity.

There's no reason to treat this version of Dave any different than the one he knows. They're both Dave. They're _both_ his brother.

“Sides,” he says. “Ain't nothin that can stop two Striders.”

Davesprite actually cracks a smile at that. Just a ghost of one. Just a hint. And he fights on.

For an instant, he thinks, maybe it'll be alright. He doesn't remember Dave being here. He grins. Maybe they can win. Fuck you, Jack Noir. We'll end it here. Here and now.

 **Scratch**

Except in the next instant that dream dies.

Thunder.

Fire.

Green.

Fucking dogs. He's always hated dogs.

 **Noise**

Time slows when he moves fast enough. It's all relativity, simple physics. He's never known why. He's never cared. Most of the time, it's a gift, got the drift? Cept for now. Now it's hell. It's watching something that even he isn't fast enough to stop.

It happens so fast.

He has enough time to think, _Dave bleeds orange birds?_ before it hits him that his brother is dying, his outline shimmering and fading. And no, fuck you, that is his brother. He has two brothers, future and past, and one of them is dying.

For the first time in his life, he loses his composure.  
“ _Dave-!_ ”

Jack picks him up by his shirt. How the hell did the guy get there? How did Jack even _catch_ him?

He didn't remember it like this. He can't think of anything but that orange form currently fading, turning into a flight of orange crows all around them.

 _Dave_

Something in him is breaking.

 _I'm a Guardian I'm a Guardian I guard I guard I guard, dave dave,_ “Dave!”

Jack grins, and throws him. He hurls across the place and when he hits the ground he hears something snap.

He can't feel his legs. But that doesn't matter, he can't even think straight. He's not thinking about how he's going to die, he's not thinking about how fucked up this all is.

He's holding onto three orange feathers. And that's all he can think about at all.

 **Noise**

“Hate to uh, stab you and... er...”

He pushes himself up so that he's almost sitting and glares.

“Shut up and finish it, you son of a bitch,” he spits. He swears, he's not crying. Somehow, it must be the rain.

Somehow.

“It'd be my pleasure.”

But the bastard doesn't even make it through his heart. A stomach wound. A fucking stomach wound, so he can watch as Jack takes his glasses and so he can squint as the light hurts his eyes. So he can watch as Jack walks off with Cal.

So he can sit alone.

So he can die alone.

 **Signal**

He can feel his body shutting down. He struggles against it, gasping like a fish, feeling his own fucking diaphragm against the blade. He fights it to the end. He won't lay down and sleep. Not ever. Not Bro strider.

His fingers are white knuckled around the orange feathers.

His breathing slows. He can't keep this up. The green flames grow higher, and his vision narrows. Everything goes blurry.

(Though he thinks he feels a breeze...)

He holds those feathers like his fading life depends on them. He takes one last breath.

“I never told you...”

How very much

I...

 **Silence**

Fire burns.

Wind blows.

The rest is silence.


End file.
